He shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time I drove a car.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, probably because his house had multiple garages, but there hadn’t been a car in his driveway when we pulled up. “How did you get out to Montauk? Did you take the train?”
He shook his head. “Sam drove. I didn’t want to waste the hours in the car not working.”
“I’m glad you came today then. It’s too beautiful not to visit more frequently.”
Jagger nodded, still looking at me. “You’re right. It is.”
CHAPTER 17
Sutton
“You hogging this view all to yourself?”
Jagger came over to where I was sitting on the bow of the boat, taking in the sunset on the ride back home. I smiled. “I’m pretty sure no one else is up here because most of the others aren’t sober enough to navigate the narrow walk along the side to make it.”
“True.” He smiled and pointed to the spot next to me. “Mind if I sit?”
I shook my head. “I’d like that.”
Jagger sat down, and we watched his incredible boat cut through the water, moving toward the glowing horizon in silence. The sky was lit in a gradient of orange and pink rays that deepened to a rich rust and burgundy as they melted into the ocean. The last bit of golden sun cast a shimmery trail across the top of the water. It made the ocean ahead sparkle.
“Haven’t done this in a while either,” Jagger murmured.
“Watch the sunset?”
He nodded.
“You know, all work and no play makes Jagger a dull boy.”
He smiled, and we let the silence sit comfortably for a while. “Your mother seems like she had a good time today.”
I nodded. “Edmund too. It’s the most relaxed I’ve seen him in ages.”
“Guess we both needed to take a break.”
“And my day turned out to be nothing like I’d expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Pure torture.” I laughed. “A day with my ex who married my stepsister.”
“How did that go down, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Brendan and Colette getting together?”
He nodded.
I let out an audible sigh. “Brendan and I split about a year and a half ago. He’s from New York, too, but we met out in California. We both went to Stanford. When he graduated, he moved back home, but I still had another semester left and wanted to do my master’s out there after I was done. We tried the long-distance thing for a while, but it didn’t work out.”
“Whose idea was it to split?”
“In a way, I guess it was both of ours. He wanted me to move back to New York and do my master’s at Columbia or NYU. I’d gotten into their programs, too. But I wanted to stay at Stanford and do my graduate work under a professor I’d TA’d for and really admired. Brendan gave me an ultimatum. If I stayed in California, we were going to break up. He wanted us to move in together in New York and get engaged. I didn’t think he’d actually end things when I decided to stay at Stanford because if he loved meenough to want to propose, how could he just turn around and dump me because I was going to be gone another year? So I called his bluff by accepting the position at Stanford, and it turned out, he wasn’t bluffing.”
“How soon after that did he get together with your stepsister?”
“We broke up in August, and they were together by Thanksgiving.”
